By Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Messinia
The ridicule of the transmission of the Holy Communion and the mockery of the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist by the media, as much as being a well-known timeless tactic against the Church, however cannot be tacitly accepted in the context of democracy and the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of opinion and speech.
For these reasons and far from any conspiracy theories, some questions arise:
a) When, due to ideological criteria, a fact of faith is ridiculed, which at the level of ontology accepts either a smaller or a larger part of a society, can this be considered a democratic expression, a constitutional right or an unconscious, not to say a consciously fascist, approach?
b) When, for the satisfaction of personal or partial ideological entanglements, the respect for the faith of anyone else is not accepted in practice and is being leveled, through the mockery of its most expressive elements, how are the honor towards diversity and the right to exist as the other detected?
c) When you cannot stand something that for another person is a way of life, and therefore you do not respect it, a faith, a fact of relationship and society -the sacrament of Holy Eucharist and the communion of God’s Gifts in this case- how can you logically and effortlessly secure the honor and the respect of the others towards your own difference?
At the time of the apotheosis of individual right, the observed serious lack of respect for the other’s faith is at least an oxymoron spiritual and cultural symptom. Obviously, individual societies are served more by turbidity than by the purity of the line between freedom and promiscuity, while in the same problematic is the tendency to criminalize the Holy Communion, thus confirming the priority of expediencies over truth.
But the freedom to cut off ideological entanglements ensures that I can coexist creatively with the other; I can meet him/her in the pluralism of a cultural event, communicate with him/her to get to know him/her better as a person, thus refuting any other perception, according to which he/she considers the other as hell.
This quality of life is attested as an act and as a morality by anyone who consciously participates in the Body of the Church and communes the Mystery of the Eucharist. That is why this Mystery is non-negotiable. Because it sets the boundaries of the Church itself. Because it constitutes an element of its identity.
Therefore, it is disgraceful to ridicule on the one hand the culture of a relationship, which can only be produced by a healthy faith, and on the other hand the way this faith is being marked and manifested, that is, as a communion of the common Cup and the Body of Christ.
Thus, for all the above, in the Orthodox Church we continue to offer the Holy Communion in every Divine Liturgy. Because we believe that we coexist in a constantly changing “very good” world that is called to coexist in a Christian “new” life, a “different experience”, sacrificing anything that can be an impediment or an obstacle to its realization. Because we believe and hope in “things” and events where the “control of the unseen” prevails and not logic, emotion and the law or right.
